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THE GOTHIC AGE site was marked out for the new church of our Lady, which was to become the parish church of the town.

To the freedom of the city everybody was admitted who could either produce his baptismal certificate (litteræ genealogiæ) or prove, by witnesses, his being of legitimate descent and Roman Catholic faith. The newly received citizen had to take an oath, which in later times he did by putting his fingers on the picture of the crucified Christ (illustration 7) in the Book of Privileges (Codex picturatus of B. Behem, early sixteenth century). Whoever migrated to another town was obliged to resign his freedom of Cracow. Being the residence of both king and bishop, Cracow also comprised within its walls the whole nobility that held Court and State offices; they mostly had their own domiciles in the city. Nobility and clergy were not subject to the municipal law, nor did they pay any town rates.

The murdered bishop Stanislas had been solemnly canonized four years before the grant of this foundation charter; the short reign of a Bohemian king (1300-1305) promoted the worship of St. Wenceslaus; accordingly, both these Saints became the Patrons of both Cathedral and City.

Prince Leszek the Black (1279-1288), who favoured the Germans, drew walls and trenches round the city and granted to its products an exemption from duty over the whole realm. Immediately after his death the citizens of Cracow are already playing an important part in politics, by helping to establish the Duke of Breslau, Henry IV, and to depose and expel Ladislaus Lokietek ), who, when the citizens treacherously opened their doors to the Silesian prince, took refuge in the Franciscan Convent and thence fled over the town wall. Henry, however, died soon (1290); after a short reign of the Duke of Great Poland, Przemyslaw II (who was crowned King of Poland by consent of Pope Bonifacius VIII, but murdered by the Brandenburgers in the very same year, 1296), and the five years'